Dear T: I really need to tell you something XLV

Two more sleeps.

I hope everything goes to plan this week.

I'm spiraling and I can't stop it on my own. Talking with my mom/brother/sil/sisters on Sunday, instead of helping, triggered me even further and I feel like literally all I've been doing is eating since that zoom call. There is not enough food in the free world to fill the emptiness in me so I really should stop trying. I feel myself sinking and I recognize where I'm headed because I've been there before and I don't want to go there again so I hope when I see pdoc he'll be able to prescribe something that will get me back to myself again.

I'm trying to decide what you asked me in your email yesterday. If I want to keep seeing you remotely until Thanksgiving, or go straight to the new therapist in person. Idk. My head is just a foggy cluster**** today and I can't think about these things right now.

Re eating - ive been reading a series of free and not free books on kindle by greg livingston? I started with 101 food rules. There are big mouth monsters on the covers. I am finding them very useful in calming my eating, staying conscious, not letting the bad guys win. I equate his "the Pig" with an evil introject. This is unique to his books, AFAIK. You know i am a big fan of the concept of evil introjects. Helping you understand why you do stuff you dont want to do, but it makes "somebody" happy, something inside you.

I hope my email didn't freak you out about my test result. But it was the right thing to do. I had to tell you since I just saw you on Wednesday.

I realise now that I'm the worst friend and totally selfish. I had an inkling that I wasn't as nice a person as I thought and now I know for sure. I'm judgemental and closed off and self absorbed. I am upset that you have cancelled the session even though you're sick. All I can think about is my own ****** needs and no one else's. And by saying all this I'm falling into a wounded victim which is even more unpleasant and I just hate myself. No wonder I have hardly any friends. You think a lot more of me than I am worth. I don't know how to do better. I honestly don't have a clue. I want to be there for others but somehow I never get it right. I always fall short. Others seem to know and have this natural altruism, I'm just a complete f up of a person.

Looking forward to seeing you in the morning.

I am glad we rescheduled for tommorow afternoon because I was not up for a session today.

thank you una!! i'm checking those out now and just got a free one. will start reading after work today (on lunch now for another few minutes)

the black cloud has receded a teeny bit more just now.

I am so sad today. I miss my guy.

i wrote an email to you last night but of course i won't send it. it's interesting to me, that somehow just the act of pretending to reach out to you was a teeny bit helpful. between that teeny bit, the bigger spark of hope i feel getting on the waiting list for pdoc, and now una's book suggestions the dark cloud is being pushed back ever so slightly just enough to where I feel like I have a little breathing room again. like descending back into the dark hell of clinical depression is not actually inevitable and I can still fight. That with help and connection with other people I might be okay this time. And then I talked to my sister, and she told me about a podcast i need to listen to called "We can do hard things" and this is a hard thing, this pushing back the dark cloud of depression trying to settle over me right now. if this has taught me nothing else, it's that i need to reach out everywhere i can and talk about it, not just let it overtake me in silence like I did back in 2008.

Pdoc please get back to me soon. Thank you. Kit

Dear T,
I think I sort of squeezed your hand at the end of the handshake today, before letting go. Thanks for squeezing back, even though maybe it was sort of an involuntary reaction. I feel it was looking for comfort and reassurance. Like something that can't really be expressed with words. Probably coming from a younger place inside of me, especially as we spent much of the time talking about my parents. Thanks for being there.

Love,
LT

I'm so glad he was able to offer you that, LT.
The hand squeeze is an underappreciated form of communication, support and encouragement.

I want to meet with you today but I don't know how productive it will be. I'm still pretty sick and I'm coughing a lot and I'm out of breath. So I don't know how much talking we'll actually get done.

I feel kind of guilty I cancelled our session and that you were so nice about it and didn't charge me. But I still feel badly. But you are literally leaving the practice for almost a year so I think me cancelling one session because I have covid and can't breathe evens things out a bit.

Thanks, Lost! Agreed on it being underappreciated.

Dear K,

I MISSSSSS YOOOOOOOUUU!!!

Love Me xx

Ps, it was good to see you in my dream last night!!

You're as stupid as the last one.

I miss doing dream work with you. Even more I miss the wild, wandering, adventurous dreams I used to have when we were in the thick of things. My dreams here lately are only snippets of things like the other night the purse dream, that was more than I usually remember anymore which bums me out. Man, I had some good ones back in the day!! Remember the ones that took up a full typed page? Yeah, I miss those ones. And the ones that you were in were always interesting.

Maybe I'll get out my box of dream journals this weekend and read through some of them, might stir up the ol' dream-maker and induce some dream time activity.

I'm feeling a little better again today than I was yesterday, so that's good. I had a meeting with my sup yesterday at work and I told her what was going on and she let me talk about it for a little bit, which was helpful. Showing up authentically does not come naturally to me, having grown up in a household where appearances were everything, but I'm learning. I mean you know how long it took me to be authentic with you. Showing up that way around my family, my boss, etc is hard but yes, practice makes possible. I won't say perfect cuz that I'll never be.

btw, it's almost 10 months now since my last session and yep, I still love you. I don't expect that will ever change. It's weird too, I want to hold onto the version of you that lives in my head that I can talk to about stuff and know what you would say... keep that, but somehow let go of 'outside my head' you, living-breathing-in-the-real-world you. That's a trick I don't know how to pull off.